British Loyalist Jeremiah William Gibbs (abt. 1768 - 1858) Still a Brick Wall for generations. I haven’t given up...

Question

Jeremiah Gibbs has been a generational brick wall and nobody seems with certainty to know who his parents are. We have some interesting leads but maybe just rabbit holes. He married a Deborah Covey. We believe he was probably born in Rhode Island per the 1850 census. We have the children’s names and DNA has confirmed some lineage. 

Fact: He is mentioned in 1850 census

Fact: He was a loyalist/Tory to Britain. He is mentioned in the Abercorn Memorial A plaque entitled "A Tribute to the Pioneers of Abercorn" 

FindAGrave

See this G2G for more sources about him

Any help is appreciated

He is the most frustrating ancestor to research for me 

There must be some detail I’m missing or overlooked which could unlock this or new technology or something 

He probably doesn’t qualify for a project but it would be nice to get him PPP

Every couple of years I’ll ask for assistance and sometimes get some good answers but there must be something I missed to get him connected 

Thank you

Note: Family search has him connected to a Thomas Gibbs and Marcy or Mercy Brown however no definitive source showing he is their son. It’s possible but I can’t see a source proving this relation. The military records of a Jeremiah Gibbs showing a different set of parents. 

Comments

The William who died October 1818 was born in 1785

Name: William Gibbs Jr Age: 33 Birth Date: abt 1785 Death Date: 22 Oct 1818 Burial Place: Morris, Connecticut, USA Cemetery: Morris Cemetery Rank: Captain Source Citation Connecticut State Library; Hartford, Connecticut Source Information Ancestry.com. Connecticut, U.S., Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, 1629-1934 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

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He was the son of William, also a captain in the Connecticut Militia. The elder William, born 1755,  pension application 1832, in Ancestry

census record 1840 Litchfield, age 80-89

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This is very helpful. This William son of William but unlikely Jeremiah s parents but the Jeremiah Military records I thought were his connected him to these parents and now seems to be a rabbit hole. However the William Gibbs genealogy is very very interesting I’d like to do more work on the family group of the two Williams. This Thomad Gibbs and Marcy Brown seem to have the winds blowing in their direction!

Answer 1

The Jeremiah Gibbs baptised in Wiltshire in 1768 is very unlikely to be the right man, even without the census birthplace of Rhode Island. He was discharged in 1789 after two and a half year's service due to  being "houghed [hamstrung] by nigroes" while his regiment was in Barbados. This is why he qualified for membership of the Chelsea Pensioners - essentially a disability pension - despite his young age.

The image is behind a paywall but the transcript is here https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBM/WO121/121000888

There's also zero evidence that this Jeremiah had a middle name William - which would have been highly unusual in England at the time anyway.

Comments

I suspected this was true but wasn’t able to verify more. This helps close one rabbit hole. Leaves the Thomas Gibbs and Marcy Brown connection as more likely. Thank you sooo much he is very challenging. 

Answer 2

I begin to suspect that he may be connected to an Orrimill Gibbs who is cited as witness at the 3rd marriage of my own brickwall ancestor, Charles Boileau.   https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Boileau-68

The Gibbs are brick walls to more than one person, from the link you will here:  https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/boileau/75/